Ghosts of Columbia

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  I had the gun, and it didn’t waver in my hand. “Sit down, Gerald. We’re going to talk.”

  He looked at the gun, then at the dead screen of the difference engine, and wilted.

  “Don’t look so depressed. You have backup disks somewhere, I’m sure, and most of what was on there you could probably replicate anyway. I’m just keeping you out of bigger trouble.”

  “You’re getting in well over both our heads, Johan.” His voice was dull.

  “We already are.” I cleared my throat, even though I wanted to be out of his office. “Now, let’s get the players straight. You had a research contract with the Defense Ministry, a fairly straight job to investigate some aspect of deghosting, probably using the magnetic basis of the electro-fluidic difference engine. That was the origin of your so-called filing protocol.”

  His mouth opened, and he gulped like a carp.

  “That contract is really over, but you didn’t want to close it out, because who else would pay you that much? Then the president’s crew came in with a special request, right?”

  “You seem to have it figured, Johan. Why ask me?”

  “I don’t have it all figured. What I can’t figure is why you killed Miranda Miller.”

  “I didn’t! I had nothing to do with it.”

  “Right.” I made my voice as sardonic as I could. “She’s an agent of New France pumping you for all you’ve got, and she finds out that you double-dealt the Defense Ministry—that the contract’s really done. You know, sooner or later, because she’s not very good, that the Spazi will find out. So you put her away.”

  “With a knife? I could have—”

  “Built your disassociator and turned her into a zombie? Or just put her under one of those helmets in the lab late some night and then carted her back to her cottage and left her?”

  “Yes. So why are you baiting me? You know the answers.”

  “You couldn’t leave Pandora’s box closed, could you, Gerald?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. All the military types wanted was a way to suck ghosts out of an area. You did it, all right, and you’re brilliant, Gerald. You saw what else was possible. So did the president’s people. Now, I don’t know how they got your reports, but I’ll bet a check would show you knew someone in the budget review shop—and Armstrong’s boys were on you in a flash. They threatened to show that you padded the contract, right?”

  Branston-Hay looked blank

  “You padded it, didn’t you? I can get the answer from the examiners, you know?”

  He finally nodded.

  “And then they asked what else you could do. You didn’t want to let the disassociator out. Even you could see the problems there. So you came up with the replicator and rejiggered your psychic scoop into a filing mechanism. And that’s how the president keeps outguessing the Speaker. He has a data bank of tame ghosts.”

  “Who are you working for, Johan? Ralston will kill you if he finds out what you’re doing.”

  I ignored the question and the threat. Any answer would be wrong. “If I were you, Gerald, I’d stick very close to your family and take a vacation, a sabbatical, anything.”

  Walking over to his desk, even as he stood there, I opened the top left drawer and pulled out sheets of Babbage Center, Vanderbraak State University letterhead. “You won’t need these, and I do.”

  “But … why … what are you doing?”

  “Trying to keep us both from getting killed.” I put the sheets of letterhead and the memo I had slipped under my folder into the folder. Then I took out my handkerchief and wiped off the Colt, setting it on the chair farthest from where he paced behind his desk. I dampened the handkerchief in his water glass, then wiped off the Babbage console keys and the arm of the chair, fairly certain I hadn’t touched anything else.

  After picking up my folder and walking to the door, I used the handkerchief to turn the knob. He didn’t stop me, just looked, almost dazed.

  I forced myself to walk slowly out of the building and straight down the steps to the green, and then to my office. The wind had picked up so much that it blew the white steam of my breath away.

  I skidded slightly on the bottom steps leading into the Natural Resources building, where a patch of ice remained, looking like someone had spilled something. Certainly the methodical Gertrude and Hector wouldn’t have left anything on the bricks. Overhead, the glow strips were glowing as the day faded.

  I unlocked the door and stopped by the main office to check my box, but nothing had been added. I looked out the window uphill and watched as Gerald hurried down to his old black Ford steamer, carting two data cases.

  Poor bastard. Then I straightened. If I didn’t keep moving, I knew who would be the next poor bastard. So I went upstairs to my office and looked at my desk and the mostly ungraded tests lying there.

  I left them on the desk. Maybe I’d get back to them, and maybe I wouldn’t, but I had more than a few things to do first. I slipped some blank second pages of university letterhead into my folder and headed back out to the Stanley, relieved in a way that Llysette was tied up with rehearsals for most of the week.

  When I got home, I unloaded Bruce’s latest creations from the Stanley before driving it into the car barn.

  Marie—I blessed her industrious Dutch heart once more and added ten dollars to the check I set out for her—had left a chicken pot pie in the oven, and it was still warm. That and the crusty bread were almost enough to make me forget what I was going to attempt that night.

  I also tried to forget the tests I hadn’t graded. But a little part of me nagged about them. I usually didn’t put off grading and returning things. After all, I was the one who believed in the efficacy of immediate feedback.

  It seemed like I hadn’t eaten in days, although that was probably the result of nerves. Still, I ate almost all of the chicken pot pie and a good third of the loaf of bread. I had a bottle of Grolsch instead of wine, and I promised that I’d run harder and longer in the morning.

  Then I went into the study and took Bruce’s latest gadgets from their boxes and assembled them. After that, I started in on the programming.

  Some of it was relatively easy because I could use the first program I had already developed for ghost replications as a basis. I’d already decided to split the application into a basic system and a separate “personality creation” configuration.

  The basic system didn’t take that long, a mere five hours. Testing it took longer, and I hoped Carolynne wasn’t watching, because I duplicated the replicate of her structure, then recoded it back to simple lines, and tried to project it.

  Of course, it didn’t work. Nothing I ever try to program works the first time. Or the second. Or the third. On the fourth try, well after one in the morning, the system worked. That is, the antennas indeed projected an image, and it promptly collapsed.

  So did I. The system part seemed to work, and I’d have to develop a better file/support structure if I really wanted to create the equivalent of ghosts. Why I’d want to do that was a question I didn’t have an answer for, except that my guts said it was going to be necessary, and I hadn’t made it as far as I had by ignoring gut feelings. Most people in dangerous occupations don’t. You figure out the reasons later, if you have the time.

  Since I didn’t think very well with headaches and bright rainbows surrounding every light I looked at, I turned them all off and lifted one foot after the other until I reached my bed.

  I looked up. A white figure hovered by the end of the bed.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Was that a face to be opposed against the warring winds?”

  “The ghost I created? I was just trying to see if the system worked.”

  “Be governed by your knowledge … repair those violent harms … be aidant and remediate …”

  “How?” I shook my head. “For most people, remediation in politics is revenge. The best seek justice, even when most, me include
d, would prefer mercy to such justice.”

  “Then dissolve the life that wants the means to lead it.” With that she vanished.

  Carolynne was definitely getting too familiar. It was a good thing Llysette wasn’t around. But then Carolynne probably wouldn’t have appeared with Llysette around. I wasn’t sure they would like each other. Respect each other, probably, but “like” was definitely another question. Forget about communicating. Was I communicating, or were Carolynne’s words only in my own mind? Was it her wish for me to create a ghost of remediation—or mine?

  My head ached so much that I got back up and took three bayers. Carolynne did not say good night again.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Difficult” wasn’t the word for the trouble I had struggling out of bed on Tuesday. I pried my eyes open and climbed into my exercise clothes—uphill all the way.

  Who would have thought that creating a ghost image for projection was so difficult? Everyone. I was just the one who thought it was possible. As for Carolynne’s idea of a ghost of remediation, that was clearly impossible. Even a ghost of justice and mercy—how would I ever do that? Yes, I understood that establishing and maintaining any image was difficult, if not impossible. But the image of justice and mercy, or even of integrity? Politicians did it all the time, but they didn’t have to have a logical structure to support it. And I certainly wasn’t about to touch remediation, except … didn’t I have to try?

  Llysette had said I was always trying to change the world. Was that it, or was I merely trying to do the impossible until it killed me?

  I sighed as I laced up the leather running boots. Some people run in lightweight, rubber-soled shoes, but that’s stupid. At least in my profession it is. You don’t run that much, but when you do it’s under lousy conditions with the world after you, and your feet need protection and support.

  Obviously, I’d have to go back to the basics—just create a totally ethical personality. Probably it would have to be a takeoff on some combination of mine and Carolynne’s, because I had something to start with her image and at least I could fix in the program what went wrong with me. My mother and father didn’t get that choice, and at times I suspect they would have liked the option.

  I still didn’t understand why my father had built the artificial lodestone. Had he been the one who read all the Shakespeare to Carolynne? Or were the lines from her theatrical background? Sometimes they made sense, and sometimes … I took another deep breath and stepped out into the cold.

  All the way through my run and exercise, through breakfast, and through my shower, I kept thinking about how to layer the codes for a ghost personality.

  Finally I shook my head. I needed to take a break, and besides, the disembodied spectre of all those ungraded tests on my desk was also beginning to haunt me. Should I have even worried about the tests? Probably not, but about some things we’re not exactly rational.

  So, after dressing, I hurried into the study, flipped on the difference engine and roughed out the code lines I thought might work, and then printed them out and stuffed them into my folder.

  Then I pulled on my coat and went out under the cold gray sky to get the steamer started. The air smelled like frozen leaves, and there was almost no breeze, a leaden sort of cold calm.

  The Stanley started smoothly, as always, and I passed Marie in her old Ford on my way down Deacon’s Lane. We exchanged waves, and her smile cheered me momentarily.

  After a quick stop at Samaha’s for the Post-Courier, I parked the Stanley in the faculty car park. Llysette’s Reo wasn’t there, but, thankfully, Gerald Branston-Hay’s black Ford was.

  On my way to my office, I nodded at Gregor Martin, but he only growled something about winter starting too soon and lasting too long.

  Even Gilda looked dour.

  “Why so cheerless?” I asked her.

  “It’s like winter out, and it’s too early for winter.”

  “That’s what Gregor Martin said.”

  “For once I agree with him. For once.” Gilda picked up the wireset. “Natural Resources Department … No, Doktor Doniger is not available at the moment.”

  Rik Paterken, one of the adjuncts, motioned as I pulled two memos and a letter from my box in the department office.

  “Yes, Rik?”

  “You have Peter Paulus in one of your classes, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “What sort of student is he?”

  I frowned, not wanting to answer as truthfully as I should have. Instead, I temporized. “Mister Paulus is able to retain virtually everything he reads. He does have a tendency to apply that knowledge blindly even when it may not be applicable to the situation at hand.”

  “In short, he can regurgitate anything, and he avoids thinking.” Paterken pulled at his chin. “He seems like a nice young man.”

  “I am sure he is, Rik.” I smiled politely.

  “He was asking permission to take the Central American Ecology course. He never took basic ecology.”

  I shrugged. “He’s probably bright enough to pick that up, but I’d guess he wouldn’t get the kind of grade he wants.”

  “That was my impression.”

  “Then tell him that,” I suggested.

  “You’re the one with the reputation for bluntness, Johan, not us poor adjuncts.”

  I shook my head and went upstairs, wanting to see what, if anything, was in the newspaper. I knew the memos couldn’t contain much of value, and they didn’t. The letter was a more sophisticated pitch for a new ecology text. I tossed it along with the memos.

  The Post-Courier headlines were a rehash of the airspace battle between the dirigibles and the turbojets, and the spacing requirements at the main Asten airport. Governor van-Hasten wanted to build a jetport and leave Haguen for dirigibles, but the legislature was balking at the funds, and the federal Ministry of Transportation had indicated no federal funds were likely.

  I leafed through the paper, still standing next to my desk, when my eyes glanced over the political gossip column. I froze.

  … One of the more interesting developments, almost unnoticed in the commotion of the ceremonial dinner where President Armstrong announced his Japanese initiative, which, incidentally, the Speaker will probably have to swallow, involved a little-known former politico—one Johan A. Eschbach. Ostensibly, Eschbach is a professor at Vanderbraak State University, but who was at the big dinner, and who disappeared somewhere in the Presidential Palace between dinner and dessert? Watch this space …

  That was another one of those surprises you really don’t like to find. Was it Ralston’s doing? Why? To offer me up to vanBecton? I put the paper down and looked at my desk. I had less than two hours to grade the quizzes, and I wasn’t giving any more this term. Period. As if I would be around to give any, at the rate I was going.

  I plowed through both sets. Eighty percent of the grades were D’s. Too bad, but I really didn’t feel charitable. No one was providing me much charity these days.

  At ten to eleven, I finished entering the marks in my grade book and set the greenbooks in separate piles to return the next day. Then I locked my door and went downstairs. Gilda was off somewhere, and I went back out into the leaden gray day. The day seemed even colder than it had at dawn. But then everything was seeming colder.

  Despite the cold and the ice, Gertrude and Hector were out on the green, carefully laying a sand and fertilizer mix on the icy bricks of the walk to Smythe. While it was more expensive than salt, the mix resulted in a lush lawn the rest of the year.

  I just waved, not really wanting to hear Gertrude’s predictable statement about every day being a good day. They both waved back.

  I smiled brightly as I walked into Natural Resources 1A. At least we’d finished the water cycle and were working on air, with an emphasis on deposition mechanisms and transport characteristics. I started right in.

  “Miss Francisco, could you tell me what air deposition had to do with the Austro-Hungarian decision to req
uire converters on internal combustion engines?”

  Miss Francisco looked suitably blank.

  “How about you, mister Vraalander? Any ideas?”

  “Well, uh, sir … didn’t it have to do with the Ruhr Valley and the Black Forest?”

  “That’s a start. Can you take it further, Miss Zenobia?”

  “Doesn’t acid deposition combine with ozone from internal combustion engines?”

  “It does. What does it do?”

  “Oh … tree damage,” blurted out mister Vraalander. “Now I remember.”

  I tried not to sigh. The rest of the class period was marginally better, just marginally, but perhaps that was because my mind was half on the column in the Post-Courier.

  Lunch was a quick bowl of soup at Jared’s Kitchen, followed by another quick look at the tests I’d already graded to make sure I hadn’t been too hurried. I hated the damned tests, and even more the fact that I had to give them to get the students to read the material. After that I scrawled out more Babbage code lines, amending my hastily printed beginning of the morning.

  Then there was my two o’clock, Environmental Politics 2B. I had to collect papers—unfortunately, because it probably meant that very few of those stalwart souls had bothered to do the reading assignment. In turn, that meant I either had to talk a lot or badger them or surrender and let them out too early, which I generally refused to do because it might give them even more inflated ideas about the value of ignorance.

  So I talked a bit about relative political values and their links to economic bases, and led them into speculation about why the Brits politically felt they couldn’t afford too much environmental protection while the Irish were busy reforesting—yet both faced virtually the same threat from Ferdinand. What made the difference? Was it another hundred miles of ocean?

  I was still tired and hoarse when I walked back to my office. I grabbed a double-loaded cola from the machine and went back to work on codes until it was time for David’s weekly finest hour—the departmental meeting.